Achieving Effective Communication in the Workplace
While CEOs may achieve great success as individuals, none of them manage it entirely on their own. A strong workplace culture that facilitates a free exchange of idea is key for any organisation to thrive.
Many successful CEOs attribute their achievements to a multitude of things. It could be how they organised positive change in a business on the verge of bankruptcy. They may talk about their success in getting a company’s product to sell like hotcakes in the market. It could even be something as deceptively simple as shifting the culture of a workplace in a more positive direction.
What these CEOs may or may not know is that all of those successes boil down to one key concept: communication.
Communication as a skill is essential to achieving success in life. This is especially true when heading up an organisation. CEOs need to make sure that they communicate their plans clearly and effectively in order to get work done. Yet a lot of highly creative and innovative individuals often lack certain aspects in interpersonal communication, which can lead to lower employee productivity and engagement.
Communication skills can be divided into four components, all of which are important for achieving effective communication. Effective communication is a balance of listening, speaking, and getting a good read on verbal and nonverbal cues.
Communication as a skill is essential to achieving success in life.
Active listening is often overlooked by many individuals in leadership positions. This is often an unintended side effect of being assigned to a position where one’s words hold more weight than others’. It’s important for any CEO to foster a workplace culture where dialogue and exchanging of ideas is welcome.
Another vital aspect of effective communication in the workplace involves paying attention to nonverbal cues. Communication often involves more than the words being spoken. Eye contact, posture, and even tonal and pitch changes can bring with it a variety of nuances that can change the context of the conversation. Nonverbal cues are important to conversation, which is why it’s also valuable for CEOs to improve nonverbal communication skills.
However not all communication in the workplace will be accompanied by nonverbal cues. Written communication or conversations done over the phone can be harder to read, which is why emails, memos, and especially payslips can often be a communication headache. A good workaround for these challenges is providing clearer messages, which can often be in the form of a more detailed pay stub like these templates from Pay Stubs 365.
Creating a culture of effective communication in the workplace also requires employees to ask questions. Communication is only effective when everyone involved in the conversation is on the same page. Asking questions is important to have everybody aligned on what the message is all about. Additionally, asking questions helps with the exchange of ideas, which are often excluded when employees are too afraid to ask.
While most workplaces will already have a culture of professionalism in place, the likelihood of emotions running high when communicating with other employees is still bound to happen. Ensuring effective communication also requires CEOs and employees to be aware of and to regulate their feelings and emotions when conducting discourse in the workplace.
Effective communication is a very important aspect of achieving success in the long run. The business will be able to meet their targets, and employees will find it easier to achieve their career goals when the entire workplace fine-tunes their communication techniques using the four aspects mentioned above.
